What Happened at COP28?

 

The Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings are annual climate summits, where representatives from member countries come together to negotiate and make decisions to combat climate change. The most well-known outcomes of the COP meetings are the Kyoto Protocol, adopted in 1997 at COP3, and the Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015 at COP21. And now, COP28 joins their ranks as one of the most important climate summits in history. Representatives from almost 200 Parties convened in Dubai, closing the conference in Dec 2023 with a decision on the world’s first ‘global stocktake’, signalling the “beginning of the end” for the fossil fuel era. The overarching objective of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C—the threshold established as part of the Paris agreement—is to be achieved by tripling renewable energy capacity and doubling energy efficiency improvements by 2030, while phasing down ‘unabated’ coal power and inefficient fossil fuel subsidies. Since the start of the industrial revolution, there has already been an increase in global temperatures of around 1°C, largely induced by the release of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.

How do human activities cause climate change?

When we burn fossil fuels to heat our homes, power our transportation networks, or generate electricity, gases such as carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere; carbon that has been locked in the ground for millions of years. The sources of fossil fuels are ancient living organisms, such as trees or animals. Layers of rock crushed their bodies after death, creating oil, coal and gas. Energy is produced when these materials are burned, helping us generate electricity. But there is an adverse side-effect to this process. Greenhouse gasses act like a blanket in the earth’s atmosphere, trapping the sun’s heat and preventing it from escaping back into space. As a result, the earth’s atmosphere warms, dramatically affecting our climate.

The burning of fossil fuel is not the only source of greenhouse gasses though. Peat harvesting, waste management, melting permafrost and animal agriculture all contribute a large amount of methane (an even more potent greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere. Animal agriculture is also a leading cause of deforestation in places like South America. Large swathes of land are cleared to create pasture or to make room for soya crops (almost 80% of the world’s soybean crop is fed to livestock). Deforestation accelerates climate change by releasing stored carbon when trees are cut down and burned. Additionally, it diminishes the trees’ role as carbon sinks, removing their capacity to absorb atmospheric CO2. The carbon costs of transporting soybeans internationally also contributes to climate change in its own way.

Climate change can have dramatic and worrying implications for both humans and the natural world. Droughts, sea level rise, flooding, increased storms, wildfires, melting sea ice, intense heat and ocean acidification are just some of the ways that climate change is currently affecting our planet. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, climate change threatens 10,967 species, and the institute for Economics and Peace predicted that there may be 1.2 million refugees by 2050.

Since the Paris Agreement at COP21, the world has been working towards a five year ‘inflection point’ known as the Global Stocktake. This is a report on how countries have been measuring up to the national contributions they proposed eight years ago. A report published by the United Nations implied that nations were not meeting their targets and the earth looked set to warm by 1.5C degrees in the next century.

So what exactly was decided at COP28?

After a week of negotiations and days of discussion, an agreement was finally made, which stated:

• In order to reach the goal of 1.5C, there needs to be a global reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 43% by 2030, with a transition away from fossil fuel use.

The international community agreed that there is a need to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, especially CO2. The majority of CO2 produced comes from the burning of fossil fuels to produce energy in power stations. The fastest way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere would be to stop burning carbon sources. Carbon Capture technology is capable of removing CO2 from the atmosphere and there have been plans to use such technology in power plants to ensure that less carbon escapes the atmosphere, but there are suggestions that it may never be able to capture as much gas as we currently produce. The most logical and realistic option currently is to remove carbon from the energy supply. It has been decided that fossil fuel use must peak soon, but it is acknowledged that less developed nations may take longer to do so.

• Advancing Climate Finance
  

Climate finance commanded the spotlight at the conference, being hailed as the “great enabler of climate action.” Currently, there is more investment in fossil fuel projects than there is in projects dedicated to renewable energy production. This has been outlined as something that must change.
COP28 was marked by a series of fresh financial commitments. The Green Climate Fund (GCF) received a welcome boost, reaching a record USD12.8 billion from pledges by 31 countries and counting. Eight donor governments committed over USD174 million to the Least Developed Countries Fund and Special Climate Change Fund. Additionally, new pledges of nearly USD188 million were made to the Adaptation Fund. These strides represent definite progress towards the trillions ultimately required to assist developing countries in their clean energy transitions.
It is now cheaper in some cases to use renewable energy resources— including wind, solar, nuclear, geothermal and hydroelectric energy—than it is to use more polluting ones. And all of these technologies are becoming more and more efficient. The COP28 Global Renewables and Energy Efficiency Pledge included the call to triple renewable energy capacity globally and double energy efficiency improvements by 2030.

• A reduction in methane emissions by 2030.

With over 150 nations endorsing the Global Methane Pledge initiated by the United States and European Union, it’s evident that numerous countries recognize the climate and health advantages of mitigating this greenhouse gas. China has recently pledged to incorporate methane reduction in its upcoming national climate plan, while the US has introduced fresh methane regulations. The Global Methane Pledge partners have committed over $1 billion in new grant funding since COP27, more than triple the existing levels. This funding is set to catalyze substantial investments aimed at achieving a minimum 30% reduction in methane emissions by 2030.

Cutting methane emissions would involve a reduction in animal agriculture, which is the source of a quarter of all emissions.

• Unabated use of coal must be phased down

Concrete strategies for the early retirement of coal power plants are in play, coupled with increasing global acknowledgment of the imperative to cease new unabated coal initiatives. Taking more decisive actions in this direction is crucial for aligning with the 1.5°C target. The Powering Past Coal Alliance is committed to intensifying efforts in the coming year, to ensure we don’t miss the window to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

It has been debated whether the proposals are strongly worded enough to put the world back on track to meet the goal of 1.5°C. Discussions went on for days over the semantics of words to be used in the final text, with the terms ‘phase down’ and ‘phase out’ being the source of much debate. In the end, it was decided that fossil fuels should be ‘phased down’ and ‘transitioned away from’,  neither of which imply the complete removal of them in the global energy supply at any point soon.  The use of the words unabated and the lack of a call for a phase out of fossil fuel use indicate that many countries still see a future in which fossil fuels may play an important role in energy production. Nevertheless, the agreements made at COP28 are a start, and may lead us on the path to a much greener future.